[Top 5] Path of Exile Best Fire Builds That Are OP

Updated:

24 Apr 2023

[Top 5] Path of Exile Best Fire Builds That Are OP

One of the best things in Path of Exile is the sheer diversity of builds we have to fiddle around with. So if you want to play with a Fire build, whatever kind it is, you have literally dozens of choices of how to build it and play with it. And here are my top 5 picks for Fire builds in Patch 3.18 Sentinel League!

5 – Omniscience Fire Reap

Fire Reap against Cortex

Though Crystalized Omniscience is extremely expensive in this league, it’s still one of the strongest uniques in the game. It works by stacking a lot of attributes, and since the Strength stacking Ascendancy is amazing at providing it, with tons of extra damage as well as easy Physical to Fire conversion for both Spells and Attacks, and with how cheap some of the key Awakened gems are in this league, Reap is easily one of the strongest single target builds! Having played it myself last league, and deleting every boss in the game with it with one or two casts, I strongly recommend it!

What the Fire Reap Chieftain Excels in:

Supremely Tanky (Can reach 90% all Ele Res and 40k Armor)
Properly geared, you can deal over 40 million HIT damage with a single Cast
Easy and straightforward to play
Reaching over 1,500 Omni is easy, and will grant you 150% Elemental Pen!

Fire Reap full details:

As an Omni build, the most important stats you want are Attributes. Rings and Belts with 2 to 3 flat 50+ Atributes, as well implicits with % Attributes will make the build truly shine. We also use a Circle of Anguish to boost our Herald of Fire, as it is a great way to easily get more %Phys added as Fire for our Reap.
We convert 100% of our Reap’s Physical Damage, caring only about the Hit part. With Awakened Unleash and Awakened Spell Cascade, we can, with a single cast, unleash 20 Reap blades that are overlapping, if the enemy is large enough, essentially multiplying our damage. So getting as much AoE is vital for damage!
Our tankiness comes from using the new jewel Melding of the Flesh and getting a single Maximum Resistance to the maximum (90%). While the guide uses Fire, with a +1 Spell Gems and +4 Max Fire Res shield, I went with Aegis Aurora in order to become tankier through Max Block. This isn’t a cheap Build, and levels are the most important thing for Reap, so getting a level 29 or 30 Reap is crucial!

For more information, check here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQARxZCxBvs&t=2s

4 – Ruetoo’s Fire Trap Saboteur

Fire Trap against the Maven

With Patch 3.18 Sentinel League, new bosses were introduced, the Uber versions of all previous pinnacle bosses. As such, builds have been created to guarantee a massive degree of safety combined with a good clearing in mind. Thus, Fire Trap is the hardest hitting DoT spell in the game, but with all the defensiveness of a fully kitted out Saboteur!

What the Fire Trap Sab Excels in:

Near immune to spell damage;
Ridiculously and unassumingly Tanky;
Can reach several millions of DPS, which tends to be hard for a DoT build;
Fantastic at clearing Expeditions and Logbooks, for massive profit.

Fire Trap Saboteur full details:

The main focus of this build is the Kongming’s Stratagem, combined with Saboteur’s Blind aura and generic damage reduction, making the build insanely tanky against spells, reducing ALL spell damage taken by 40% with a single item. And if you’re rich, you can invest into Spell Suppress, for another 53% reduced damage, reaching a total of 93% (this can go higher) reduced spell damage taken!
Fire Trap’s inherent base damage is so high, it outmatches every other DoT skill by over a thousand base damage, starting at 4k at gem Level 20. And of course, we scale that further by getting as many gem levels as possible, and AoE, so our Fire Traps, which have no cooldown and over 10 can be thrown at the same time (the burning ground does not overlap in damage, just coverage), can cover the whole screen and arena.
As such, it has a fantastic uptime of damage, since most boss arenas aren’t massive, and you can basically cover it entirely with your burning ground. It’s also a fantastic Expedition clearing skill because it bypasses all of Expedition’s monsters' defensive mechanics, like immune to ailments or block, since it isn’t a poison, ignite or bleed, and it isn’t, well, blocked by the Shield guys, who give most builds a lot of hardship!

For more information, check here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7RvJ02kfvQ

3 – Explosive Arrow Ballista

Explosive Ballistas Against the Maven

Undeniably the most played build in 3.17, calling it a Flavor of the Month build would be a euphemism. Able to clear any content on a 5L and white weapons, this build can take you from the start to the endgame in no time and seemingly no effort!

What the Explosive Arrow Ballista Ignite Excels in:

Insanely high single target Ignite Damage.
Clears reasonably well.
Can do all content.
League Start, HC, SSF viable.

Explosive Arrow Ballista Ignite full details:

The single most important stat you want is Attack Speed. As such, you’ll want the quickest bow possible to be able to stack 20 EA Fuses, increasing your damage exponentially.
Since our ballistae attack by themselves, we can focus on dodging and avoiding enemy damage. Unlike most attacks, EA scales extremely well with Levels, and as such, you’ll want at least a +3 bow with extra stats, preferably attack speed and fire dot multi.
Our defences come in the form of 100% Spell Suppression and lots of Evasion, as well as having our ballistas taunting and absorbing part of the damage we take instead.

For more information, check here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3229979

2 – Detonate Dead Ignite

Vaal Detonate Dead against Glacier Boss

In a similar vein to the previous build, this one is ignite-based using the life % of a monster. It was actually a FotM build in Scourge League and sustained some heavy nerfs, but it has persevered and it’s still insanely strong due to a condoned (by GGG) bug involving spectres in 3.18!

What the DD Ignite Excels in:

Massive base damage without heavy investment.
Super tanky, block capped with Aegis.
League Start, SSF, and HC Viable.
Good clearing with prolif.

Detonate Dead Ignite full details:

Despite the nerfs that Desecrate and Spectres received, cutting down on their maximum life as well as QoL nerfs, this build changed to incorporate the highest level of Phantasmal Unearth as possible, in order to scale corpse level as high as possible, since we deal damage based on the corpse’s life.
We achieve that by equipping a +5 Hands of the Templar together with Empower and Enhance, to further boost the Unearth’s level and quality, and with a +5 Corpse Level Unearth helmet enchant, we can reach level 90 corpses!
While this is still a great League Start build, you need to invest a lot to become a monster at deleting bosses. It can reach, however, upwards of 20 million Ignite DPS.

For a full breakdown, check here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3209608

1 – Pohx’s Righteous Fire Inquisitor

Celestial Righteous Fire MTX Against the Guardian of the Phoenix

Pohx is a very well-known streamer and content creator and a favorite of mine, and as he is wont to do, he loves playing builds that deal damage to themselves in order to do damage, like Death’s Oath or RF. Combined with substantial buffs and nerfs, as well as massive changes to how RF works, RF became a FotM build in 3.16 and 3.17, and with the balance freeze, Pohx’s mostly responsible for heralding this build into the meta of 3.18.

What Pohx’s Righteous Fire Excels In:

Extremely Tanky (of course, it’s an Inquisitor build, it’s always tanky!
Buttery smooth clear.
Can League start if you know what you’re doing.
Cheap to start with and can scale to upwards of 6 million DPS.

Pohx’s Righteous Fire Inquisitor full details:

Righteous Fire works by continuously sacrificing over a third of your Life and ES to deal part of that damage to enemies surrounding you as fire damage, and since the way to scale damage is by getting more Life and ES, you progressively get tankier and tankier.
In 3.17, Melding of the Flesh was added to the game, and with it, we can easily get 90/90/90 Elemental Resists, by stacking a single resistance and then mimicquing it for the other resists. And our shield of choice, this time, is an Aegis Aurora, for +5% Max Cold Res, and we scale as much Max Cold res as possible, with Purity of Ice level 23 and loads of Aura Effect!
To increase your damage further, we use a secondary 6L with Fire Trap, since 3.17 buffed it, granting the highest base damage over time of all skills! With Replica Soul Tether, 50% of all damage bypasses Energy Shield and grants 15% of Max Life as ES, and this gets increased by all your % ES on gear and tree. Since RF deals more damage based on how big our Combined Life/ES is, we get even tankier whiles increasing our damage!

For a completely thorough guide, from start to finish, follow Pohx here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoQ8LWCLk9A